Beyond Concepts

“We just get rid of all of our concepts, all of our painful concepts, whatever concepts we are having an affair with. We are always having an affair with concepts and there are plenty of them.

Every concept has a story line. Think about it. “I am poor.” That is a concept. “I am stupid.” That is a concept. “I am a woman.” That is a concept. “I am a man.” That is a concept too. They are all concepts. “I don’t have enough money, but if I had a million dollars, then I would be happy.” That is a concept. They are all concepts.

Get rid of them in a single moment without even taking the time to meditate, without taking the time to analyze them.

Transcend all limiting concepts as soon as they arise.

Let them go even before we have had time to meditate, before we have had time to peel the skin to examine what’s inside, before we have seen whether they are real or not.

The idea is to simply let go of them.”

Jackson Peterson’s comment: How is this “done”? It’s like you are driving and suddenly catch yourself “daydreaming”; the daydream suddenly vanishes.

What does one “do” to awaken from a daydream or a thought process of any kind?

Attention suddenly ceases engaging (energizing) the thoughts and one has a moment of empty clarity. One then rests as that “empty clarity” with its own natural attentiveness not evolving into thought.

We discover two important points: one is that our ” natural state” engages in its own mental creativity and that the mental creativity engaged with, is itself simply it’s own structured “attention”.

Our attention is our natural and vividly clear “presence” when left unstructured. When “structured” into thought forms and daydreams, the underlying awareness loses its factor of attentive “presence”.

Rigpa is “presence of awareness” where the natural, vivid attentive presence remains unstructured and unestablished into thoughts.

In Dzogchen we would say that Samantabhadra is the Ground Awareness (Zhi), and it’s self-arising Cognitive Clarity is its Presence.

It is that cognitive clarity “consciousness” (shes pa) that remains “present” as the pure radiance of Samantabhadra (a Buddha) or it wanders into developing subject/object thought forms (samsara) that then appear within the Ground Awareness (Zhi) like floating holograms.

In Dzogchen we are introducing this “wandering consciousness” to its own inner essence as being itself Samantabhadra or original Ground Awareness (Zhi).